A/N: I've been doing some D&D recently, and decided to run a quick adventure largely based around puzzles or riddles. Very Greek, probbably.

These mountains are cold and ancient.
Nobody's lived here for a very long time.
Some say that at the heart of their jagged peaks lies the home of the gods.
Others say that there's riches beyond measure.
Others still say it doesn't matter, because anyone who goes looking for those things rarely comes back.

The wind gusts again, and you shiver.

But who are you, again?

A: You are a Geptad Searcher. A long time ago now, your last parent went into these mountains in search of something. By the time you were 8, you knew they weren't coming back. By the time you were 19, you packed your bags and decided to find out why.

B: You are a Fairy Daredevil.There's not a lot of things you won't do just for the heck of it. This one time you ran away from a bear while challenge-eating hotdogs. A shiver runs down your spine as you struggle to stay aloft in the wailing breeze, and you suddenly wish you hadnt taken up this dare.

C: You are John Rodriguez. The wind is making you cold and and this trip was a dumb idea and you're really hungry and you want to cry a lot and you only looked down at your GameThing for a moment and, and, and, you just realised that your friends have forgotten about you and left you behind.

As the realisation that your friends forgot you sinks in, you cling to your GameThing with an unsteady grasp and sniff. After crying for a while, you realise that this is a bad place to wait for someone to come along and listen to you sobbing because your claws are getting numb with the wind and waddle up the narrow track towards the cave ahead.

There was some kind of writing on the pillars outside but you didnt read it because it looked boring and you were cold. Inside the cave is kinda damp, which is nice, but still chilly, which is not.
You squint through teary eyes and see that theres some doors with pictures set into the cave ahead and even more writing on a plinth in the middle. You slump bored-ly in front of the plinth, which reads:
'He says to sister "Come and play,
we'll scamper free the whole bright day"
but then he tires and falls away,
and now she on her own must stray. '

Instead of playing a video game, you decide to conserve its battery instead, in an exceptionally rare flash of foresightedness, and investigate the doors. You choose the moon door... it fills you with good thoughts, like food, and push it open. To your irritation, it leads back outside, to a different path .

The wind has died down, but you're still about to go and flop down back inside when you notice something up the path and slip your way up the stony slope towards it.

Now just what is going on here?

You knock because you don't know what else to do and you not exactly creative. Specifically you knock on the sign and it falls over with a clatter. You're just about to burst into tears about ruining this sign when you didnt mean to and and what if someone gets mad at you when you didn't mean to, when a thin reedy voice echos from somewhere nearby, saying:

>Start to bawl a bunch about all the horrible events that lead you here. Be as pitiful as possible, not on purpose, really just because you need to vent because you're sad and feel terrible. And hungry. And cold. Apologize profusely about knocking over the sign, while still crying. Ask who this person is and why they're here when you kind of get a hold of yourself.

(07-21-2018, 04:11 AM)potatocrisps(CW) Wrote: »>Start to bawl a bunch about all the horrible events that lead you here. Be as pitiful as possible, not on purpose, really just because you need to vent because you're sad and feel terrible. And hungry. And cold. Apologize profusely about knocking over the sign, while still crying. Ask who this person is and why they're here when you kind of get a hold of yourself.

(07-21-2018, 04:11 AM)potatocrisps(CW) Wrote: »>Start to bawl a bunch about all the horrible events that lead you here. Be as pitiful as possible, not on purpose, really just because you need to vent because you're sad and feel terrible. And hungry. And cold. Apologize profusely about knocking over the sign, while still crying. Ask who this person is and why they're here when you kind of get a hold of yourself.

"Ah well. If the sign truly belonged to me, I fear I would weep. But as it does not, so neither shall I."

When you ask the barrel who they are the tone of its voice changes slightly, becoming vaguely peeved in the same way your GameBox friends do when you say you want to play with them.

"Hah! You don't know who I am? Then I suppose I am a fool indeed, and grown fat in the head with pride at all these passing seekers of wisdom who let my name pass like water from their lips."

You ask him whether you can play Guitar Hero with him while you wait for your friends and he tells you that you dont seem to have grasped the point of aescetic seclusion and asks whether you have any meaningful questions or if you're just wasting his sunlight.

"An interesting question. Not in the philosophical sense, that is! More pompous fools than I have pondered that one quite enough, so to consider in the purely here-and-now..."
You blink owlishly all the way through the sudden spiel, "-f course I had up until this moment assumed you like all the idiotic challengers before you were on your way to meet the Oracle. It now seems to me at once clear that you are doing nothing of the sort, and are in fact just lost. Or perhaps not very bright."

(09-15-2018, 04:55 AM)LoverIan Wrote: »Ask why his name is so well known that I do not

"An honest man I feel I am, although much reduced as of late."

(09-16-2018, 07:53 AM)Ten11 Wrote: »Do you know whats up with those 3 weird doors back there?

There's a sort of silence that a person who wasnt John Rodriguez might read into, and the person says that it was a death puzzle that you apparently just wandered through without noticing. You sniff sort of half-heartedly, considering whether to cry again, but manage to pull through.

"If you don't have much more to say for yourself, sad fellow, then you ought to get moving. It's cold out, after all, and everyone knows that there's no turning back on the Oracle's path. Admittedly that's why I'm still here, since such a slavish convention begs to be mocked, but you hardly seem cut out for such ethical choices."
A plug is put into the hole in the barrel from the inside and the voice doesn't say anything more.